Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: September 7, 2025
At least he died in peace," he said, and drew a hard, quivering breath. Then he stood up again. "Juliet, I'm so sorry. Come inside! I'll light the lamp. I couldn't stand that empty house with only my boy's dead body in it. Mrs. Rickett has been there, but she's gone now." He turned and pushed open the door. "Wait a minute while I light up!"
In the meantime Black Bart loafed behind, lingering on the crest of each rise to look back, and then racing to catch up, but halfway back to Rickett he came up beside the master, whining, and leaping as high as Barry's knee. "You seen something?" queried Barry. "Are they comin' on the trail again?"
She coloured deeply under his look. "You are rather alike in some ways," she said. "It was partly that and partly being well, rather interested in you, I suppose. And Mrs. Rickett told me as much of your family history as she knew before I ever met you. So, you see, I didn't have much to fill in." "And still it makes no difference?" he said. She shook her head. "None whatever.
He had gathered fifteen practiced fighters who represented, it might be said, the brute body of the law, and when they, with most of Rickett at their heels, burst down the door of the Sheriff's office and found his body, they had only one thought, which was to swing into the saddle and ride on the trail of the killer, who was even now in a diminishing cloud of dust down the street.
I'm going to God to tell Him so!" He turned with the words, the impulse of the stricken creature urging him, and ignoring the remonstrance which Mrs. Rickett had barely begun he made headlong for the door, dragged it open, and was gone.
"And," concluded the store-keeper, fixing his eye upon Lee Haines, "if you want a long ride free of charge, and ten bucks a day with chow thrown in some of you gents ought to go to Rickett and chin with Pete." Haines waited to hear no more. He even forgot to ask for the Barry mail, swung into his saddle, and rode with red spurs back to the cabin in the mountains.
Rickett beamed. "I will, miss, I will. I'll bring him in with the pudding. P'raps if you was to give him a little bit he wouldn't be shy. He's very fond of gingerbread pudding." "I wish I were!" sighed Juliet, as her landlady's portly form disappeared. "I shall certainly have to have a cigarette after it, and then there will only be one left! Oh, dear, why was I brought up among the flesh-pots?"
He meant to stay two nights only, but was knocked down by rheumatic fever, and for six weeks disorganized Polder's establishment, stopped Polder's work, and nearly died in Polder's bed-room. Polder behaves as though he had been placed under eternal obligation by Rickett, and yearly sends the little Ricketts a box of presents and toys. It is the same everywhere.
And every day the inhabitants of Rickett gathered at the shooting gallery to watch the tests and wonder at the successes and smile at the failures. It was a very hard test which the sheriff had imposed. A man stood to one side of the iron-plate back wall which served as the target.
It was true that to make Tucker Creek he would have to double out of the Morgan Hills and brush back perilously close to Rickett, but Billy was convinced that this was the outlaw's plan; for though the Caswell City fords would be his safest route it would take him a day's ride, on an ordinary horse, out of his way. Besides, the sheriff had always said: "Barry will play the chance!"
Word Of The Day
Others Looking